Gerard Terborch (1617-1681) was the creator of the “Conversation-piece,” and one of the earliest to portray the well born engaged in music lessons and similar occupations; he was one of the greatest of the Dutch “small-masters,” and in every way the superior of the uninspired Dou. Terborch invites us to join him in the fine decorum of a noble chamber where the appointments are carefully tended, while its occupants give themselves up to cultured, if not perhaps deeply intellectual, pursuits. We forget all about the carousing and bestial profligates who people the taverns of Jan Steen and much less accomplished painters, and watch the refined fingers stray over the keyboard of the open spinet or sweep the strings of a well-made mandoline, as in the _Concert_ (No. 2589, Plate XXXIII.). Equally fine are the two _Music Lessons_ (No. 2588 and No. 2591), the former being signed and dated 1660. The _Military Galant_ (No. 2587) exhibits Terborch’s dexterity in the rendering of reflected light on a red tablecloth, although the subject has an innuendo which hardly adds to its charm. The _Ecclesiastical Assembly_ (No. 2590) is only a small sketch on panel, and affords but a feeble echo of this painter’s masterpiece, the _Ratification of the Peace of Münster_, in the National Gallery. Terborch was a pupil of his father, who had visited Italy, and he studied also under Pieter Molyn the Elder at Haarlem previous to visiting England in 1635. He travelled much more extensively than most of his contemporaries, and went to Spain during the best period of art in the Peninsula. He does not seem to have been dependent on his professional success for his living, which was passed in easy circumstances. Nor did he busy himself as a teacher, his only direct pupil being Caspar Netscher (1639-1684), who gives us a _Music Lesson_ (No. 2486), of the approved stamp, and a _Violoncello Lesson_ (No. 2487). JAN STEEN